The Road Less Traveled
Shannon Haines
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
...Robert Frost
Time was running out. The clock was ticking. The eleventh hour was almost upon me. There could be no more procrastinating. I had a decision to make. Which road should I take? Let me back up. I was one of the lucky ones. I spent the fall semester of my final year at Saginaw Valley State University doing my student teaching in my hometown of Harrison, MI. With student teaching done, graduation was a quick blur and it was January. I was hired as a long-term substitute in the same school that would last for the rest of the school year. I looked for permanent employment that summer and landed a job teaching that fall. I settled in and began my teaching career. It was simple. It all came together. Then all at once, it hit me, I had been coasting along and it was time to start thinking about my continuing education credits to renew my certification. Now what?
I knew that I needed to start gathering some credits and quickly before I was unable to renew and obtain my Professional Certification. If I didn’t earn my credits, I’d have to apply for an extension. So, I started asking colleagues and other teachers that I knew how they were going about obtaining their credits. What a myriad of answers and options. There were credits that I could get for attending conferences, if I just paid the extra monies for them. I was told that SB-CEU’s were the way to go. (After getting a few of those, I realized that they couldn’t count for Provisional Certification, so that route quickly fizzled out!). I could take some classes at the local RESD and (again for extra monies) get college credits that way. It seemed that there were so many choices, but they were all just pieces here and there. I had people sending flyers and emails my way about every subject under the sun, many that I had no interest in. While I appreciated their help, I knew that just picking and choosing a credit here and there with no direct correlation wasn’t going to work for me. I had to have an interest and a reason. I was looking for a direction to take with my continuing education, so I had to keep looking.
Somehow I came across the online MAED program offered at Michigan State University. What a great idea. I could go to school completely online, still be home for my family, work on my classes without taking time away from my job plus I wouldn’t be driving 2 ½ hours one way to go to class. To top that off, I would be able to attend a top notch college which has earned high rankings both in the U.S. and nationally. How could I go wrong? While I realized that this was not the road most of my colleagues were taking, or had taken, I knew that it was the one that I was looking toward. I made the decision to take that road less traveled and it certainly has made all the difference.
My first semester, I enrolled in three classes including TE836. This was the one class I looked forward to. I have always been a reader. I’ve always read to my children. I love to read books aloud to students. This class was going to be fun! The class is named “Awards and Classics of Children’s Literature”, so I knew we would be looking at those award winning books. I had hopes of getting more ideas and more books for my ever-growing library. I supposed I went into this course thinking we’d be looking at and reading and talking about children’s books and what awards they had won. There was much more to this class. While the main focus was looking at different award books and talking about what makes a book a classic, this was just the tip of the iceberg for me.
This learning environment wasn’t all about what I could get out of it; it was about how my classmates and I could dissect things. I did get a lot of great ideas. My book library did grow (and continues to grow monthly). The content of the class was great, but that wasn’t what I remember most about this class. It was the discussions within the class setting that made the difference. Up to this point, it was almost as if I was alone in going to school and learning. Yes, it is true that other classes provided an online community, but the interaction wasn’t to the extent that it was in this class. I did take a few online classes while obtaining my Associates and Bachelor’s Degrees, but this was truly the first online class I had taken where I felt like I was an integral part of a group. I didn’t feel alone in my learning. I realized that somehow, even though I had never met the professor or any of my fellow classmates, we were a team. We worked together. We gave and received positive and corrective feedback without remorse. We were all pulling together toward one common goal. It wasn’t about completing the class and getting a grade. It was about functioning together as one unit and getting the most we could while ensuring that we were also giving our all to the effort. One of my first classes at MSU made me realize that I wasn’t alone and that this was going to be a great experience.
My second semester found me enrolled in TE861b, Inquiry, Nature of Science, and Teaching. Science is not my strong point, so I was hoping that this class would be one that provided me some more ideas for instruction and application within the classroom. We regularly talked about and linked our reading to observations, patterns, and models, connecting our readings and videos. We looked at the Strands of Scientific Proficiency and connected to those. We dug deeper into scientific inquiry and how to teach our students to inquire. One of the things that stuck out most for me with this course and taught me the most was the interview assignment. We were asked to interview other adults or students about what they knew about the inquiry and nature of science. We were to ask questions that focused on a specific inquiry skill or strategy and generate a report based on the answers we received.
The feedback I received was very interesting to say the least. First of all, I sent the interview to every colleague in my building and only four replied. That was an eye opener for me. It made me wonder if they were not willing to answer my seven questions or if they didn’t know how to answer them. The answers I did get were very brief, save for one colleague. It appeared to me that since Math and LA are the “tested” subjects on MEAP and Science is not a yearly test, what teachers know about the practice of “teaching science” is often more limited. This provides our students a disadvantage as it seems we focus only on Science when the upcoming year is a Science MEAP year. More time needs to be spent on teaching teachers how to teach all subjects, including science. The big impact this class had on me was that it was important that I apply myself to all subjects equally in order to give my students a fair advantage. I couldn’t be another teacher who focused only on what the MEAP or the State of Michigan said I should be teaching. It was a good reminder that my job was for the students and I needed to provide them with the best that I could give. I wasn’t seeing that from my colleagues. It gave me the incentive to keep students at the forefront of what I was doing.
By far, TE831, Teaching School Subject Matter with Technology was a class that I still am so thankful for having taken. While I was a bit leery of this class at first, I was sure that I could do it, if I just took the time. Technology in the classroom is a tough thing in the district I teach in. We are a poor district with very little technology available. We have one computer lab in each building that all teachers need to fight for time in. We have calculators that are on their last legs and many are dying daily. We had to share the calculators during MEAP as there were too few for each classroom to have a set. When we do get something new, there is no money left for training, so the teacher needs to figure out how to utilize it alone.
This class showed me real ways to use what’s out there and what’s available to help students in their learning. We had to repurpose technology that the students have (iPods, MP3 players) and even use basic free programs available on the internet to the student’s advantage. While taking this course, my students created digital presentations using Prezi to share their biographies when I had originally planned on poster board presentations. I was able to have them create questions and utilize a program called zoomerang to have other students answer their questions and then they could analyze the answers. The students were much prouder of their work in the end too.
It was such an eye opener to realize how much technology could be successfully integrated into the classroom. My students were often telling me how to fix or delete things along the way. This generation is not afraid of technology. Using it as a learning tool in the classroom rather than just using it to say I did was a huge result of this class. I still have students ask me about using the computer and I tell them that we aren’t going to use it just to be on it, we are going to be able to implement it as a tool for learning. Of course, I get groans, but no one complains about actually “working” on a project when they are in the computer lab. Teaching our students the benefits of this technology is so important and that was the big thing I learned from this course. It’s not about using technology; it’s about using it as another teaching tool.
In this, my final class for my Masters Degree, ED870, I’ve come to realize how much I’ve learned along this journey. Each semester of my program, I have worked hard to complete the tasks necessary. When the semester ended, I took a breather and then dove into the next set of classes. I didn’t spend much time reflecting on all that I’d been working towards. This class has made me back up and take a good look at how far I’ve come and what I’ve experienced along the way. Creating a portfolio that showcases those accomplishments has made me realize that I should be proud of the work that I have done along the way. It has helped me understand that all along, I’ve been working towards the goal of better understanding of not only my students and their needs, but my teaching as well. Putting this portfolio together has been such an eye-opener to all that has went into my current level of teaching. I look forward to not only keeping it up, but being able to showcase it to future employers and even my students.
I have had so many different experiences and opportunities to share things with my students along the way. I feel like I’ve become a much more thoughtful teacher as I’ve taken these courses. I realize that I am in no way “finished” learning. Just as those GLCE’s change, Common Core comes into play, MEAP is rearranged, and so is my life as a teacher. My job is to educate my students as best I can. The world is constantly changing, so education must change along with it. My job as a professional educator is to stay on top of those changes and ensure that my students are given the best that I can give them in order to be successful in their lives. I am a teacher; therefore, I will also always be a student.
Frost, R. (n.d.). Poems to live by – the road not taken by robert frost « scratchings on the page. Retrieved from http://scratchingsonthepage.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/poems-to-live-by-the-road-not-taken-by-robert-frost/